June 20, 2010

Sliding into summer:

As many of you know, my wife and I live on a small acreage between Estherville and Ruthven, Iowa.Our home for 30 plus years now- has been as we say a work in progress- slow but steady. It has finally become "our little peace of heaven". Every summer has been rated by how many projects we were able to knock off before winter hits and we have finally reached a point where the project load has improved.We really look forward to our Sunday mornings where we can get up and watch the sunrise with our hot cups of coffee and listen to the world awaken around us. We get several memorable mornings each summer but it's the summer evenings that we cherish where everything seems to fall into place. We had one of those special evenings two nights ago where we looked at each other and said "this must be heaven". The evening was cool but not to cool- there was a slight breeze- there was almost total silence-no bugs biting and lots of lightning bugs flying around- this was our way to bring on summer.

As you can see by the images, the flowers are slowly making progress and as the weather starts to warm this week I should soon be in flower heaven. These images were taken on a prairie NE of Lost Island Lake which is just five miles south of my home so I don't have to go far. The milkweed plants are almost ready to bloom and I noticed the butterfly milkweed is just starting to show its color also. For those of you that may be interested, the first image is of Black-eyed Susan's and the others are of immature cone flowers.

Well that's all for now- I hope the fathers out there had a good fathers day and I hope you have time this summer to find your own "peace of heaven" some where and remember to take time and smell the flowers this summer. Take care and thanks for stopping by.